Episode 2713 CWSA 01⧸07⧸25
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 19 minutes
Words per Minute
147.73328
Summary
In this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, I talk about all kinds of tech and political news, including a new kind of 3D projector, quantum computing, and a new $3,000 personal AI supercomputer.
Transcript
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization.
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It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and I don't think you've ever had a better time.
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It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens now.
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Well, so I've got lots of tech news and a bunch of political news.
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I'm going to say most of the tech news, too, after the political stuff, but there are a couple of cool things.
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CES, the technology show, is happening right now for 2025.
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And one of the things that's being introduced is a 3D projector.
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Now, not the kind that projects on a flat screen and it gives it, you know, the appearance of being 3D.
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It actually creates the 3D holograph and can put it on your table and have it dance in front of you.
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Now, I don't know if they can do it with photorealistic stuff.
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So you look at the table and sitting on the table, apparently, is a little character that's dancing right in front of you as a 3D object.
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Well, I did a little deeper dive on quantum computing because I was trying to understand.
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When I hear people explain how it works or why it works, it sounds like word salad.
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And I thought to myself, hmm, I guess maybe it's because I don't have the technology background.
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And I went deeper and deeper, and I'm quite sure that nobody knows why it works.
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And you've heard things like, I think Joe Rogan said this the other day, that quantum computing works because it accesses the infinity of other dimensions.
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There's nothing like accessing other dimensions.
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We don't know what is happening, but there's no indication it's accessing another dimension.
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So the things they say are things like, well, you know, this probability wave interferes with another one.
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And between the two of them, they can predict the future without using any logic or any calculation.
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And that future, they say, could be like the solution to a difficult, you know, problem, like a math problem.
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You just interfere a couple of probabilities, and then you can see the future.
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So what quantum computing is alleging to do is literally see the future or to peer into the past, I guess, too.
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None of this is really possible as far as I know.
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It's just because I don't understand the field.
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And I've now seen two experts who do understand it, kind of suggest that nobody understands it, and we don't know if it could ever even be commercial in a big way.
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I mean, it might have some niche, you know, specific things it can do, but it's never going to be a general computer.
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So forget about having your own quantum computer.
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But NVIDIA just created a $3,000 personal AI supercomputer.
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And it's only this little box, which if you wanted to work on AI, if I understand it right, it would be like a data center in a tiny little box.
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So if you were working with AI, instead of having to access a data center, you can access this little box on your desk.
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And apparently, you have, like, full AI capability.
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So I don't know the ins and outs and the pluses and minuses of doing that versus having access to the actual full data center.
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But it's got 200 billion parameters, and it looks like a big deal.
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And then they also have a secret chip that's going to go in humanoid robots.
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So with all those new introductions, I guess the stock for NVIDIA would be, and it's down.
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I think NVIDIA is worth well over $3 trillion now.
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And, you know, they're talking about things that looks like it would have a big impact on Tesla.
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Because if they put these humanoid chips in robots, does Tesla buy some of those chips?
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Or do they have their own chips for the robots?
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So I don't know who's smart enough to know if any of these NVIDIA things have any impact on Tesla's future.
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In the Guardian, they're saying that virtual employees could come this year.
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In other words, an AI agent that can take instructions and act like a person and get things done.
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And that's based on my experience where I tried to create over the summer.
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Trying to create an AI agent that could just answer some questions on my Dilber.com webpage.
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And what I learned is it doesn't look like it's possible.
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With the current AI, which would be different from the future versions, which are AGI, but the one that uses a large language model and just use patterns, it can't answer questions reliably.
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Even if you have a database and you say, AI, do you see this database?
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When I ask you a question, only look at this database, which is just a document, and only answer from that.
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And then you ask a question, it'll just make something up without even looking at the document.
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There was actually a launched commercial product that, as far as I can tell, doesn't work.
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So there was nobody who had figured out how to make it stop hallucinating.
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And as far as I know, it might not be possible.
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Because the large language models don't just follow rules.
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And I don't know that you could tweak it, fix it, patch it.
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That would be a whole different technology that we haven't seen yet.
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But I guess Sam Altman thinks they're getting close.
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But I'm going to go contrarian and say the current AI is not going to create an employee that you can rely on.
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So there were at least two things that were fake news that I reposted yesterday without knowing they were fake news.
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How many times am I going to get fooled by something that really looks real?
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One of them was a parody that showed a company that would be the reconstituted Enron creating a nuclear egg.
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It was something that you could hold in your arms that would be a nuclear power plant for your personal home.
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And the commercial for it was really well done.
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It had specifications and how to use it and everything.
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But at least I was aware enough to say, is this real, when I reposted it.
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The rules on X is that it must be clearly labeled.
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But I think the whole clearly part, you know, maybe is in question.
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Meanwhile, there's a new study, according to Just the News.
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Stephen Richards is writing that a new study says that TikTok suppresses anti-China content.
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But it suppresses the anti and promotes the other.
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Now, is there anybody you know who's been telling you this for years?
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Is there anybody who said, you know, that China's got their finger on this and there's no way that this is all, you know, objective?
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I talked to a TikTok user the other day, and I mentioned there was going to be, you know, it would be banned unless an American buys it.
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And I said, it's because, you know, it could be persuasive in a way we don't like.
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And the person I talked to said, but you don't understand.
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If you did, you'd know that I see both sides of every story.
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I think both sides of every story are, in fact, on TikTok.
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But the problem is which ones you see the most and who sees it.
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And as I explained to the TikTok user, who shall remain anonymous, I said, what if there are some people using TikTok that TikTok can tell for sure they cannot be influenced, meaning that you're a hard Democrat or you're a hard Republican?
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But do you think that TikTok can identify people who are on the fence?
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Because everything depends on the people on the fence, the independents.
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And if it did, do you think the independent would get exactly as much, you know, content as you're seeing?
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So the thing is that you can't tell if persuasion is happening.
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And if the only thing you know is that you're seeing both sides, you don't know if you're the person they're trying to influence.
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But there's no way that they're going to keep their finger off the button if it's so easy to move the, you know, persuasion needle.
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So anyway, this it's not peer reviewed yet, but it will be.
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Do you think China will use this to influence the world?
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And Kevin O'Leary seems to be one of the people who's part of a group looking to buy it so it would stay.
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TikTok could stay in business, but become an American thing with American data and American control.
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I don't know if that's going to happen, but we'll see.
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Oh, so the Washington Post is reporting, according to the New York Post, is reporting about the Washington Post,
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that Trump is talking about scaling back his tariff threats
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and making them more about specific industries instead of making them broad.
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Why is the Washington Post working against the interests of the United States?
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A hundred percent of the people watching this story know that Trump is using tariffs for negotiation.
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Do you think the Washington Post doesn't know that he's using it for negotiations?
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So the main thing that you do if you're negotiating is you come in with your hardest offer,
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you know, the toughest one, so that you can negotiate from that should you need to.
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Oh, yeah, we're going to tariff everything from Canada if we have to or everything from China.
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I don't know if he says that, but he acts like the tariff is just going to be wonderful and great
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and good for the country, and then the smart people say, but it's like he doesn't understand tariffs.
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He doesn't know that the American company pays for it, not the foreign companies shipping in,
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He doesn't have to say your version in order for this to work.
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So he has to pretend, I'll say pretend, that he wants tariffs so badly and they're so good
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that the more tariffs he has, the happier he's going to be, and then go into the negotiation.
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But the Washington Post has tried to kneecap him.
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They're broadcasting to the world that he doesn't mean his starting position.
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Are they just, is it just an anti-American entity and they decide what to write about
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Now, I don't think that's the case, but it looks like it.
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I guess they want to attack Trump in any way they can.
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And then, of course, you have to ask the question, what would tariffs do to Amazon.com?
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So this is the kind of reporting that, even though it's, I'm sure it's accurate, I don't
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think it's inaccurate, but this is the sort of thing you should brush over, as in, some
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people say that, you know, it's a negotiating position, because that's not telling anybody
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But if you say it's a negotiating position and he's already saying that he's not going to
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stick with it, well, that's not reporting, that's just ruining his negotiating position.
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Well, yesterday, the Democrats, who have been saying for eight years that Trump is Hiller,
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they were quite proud of their peaceful transfer of power to Hiller.
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Do you think that anybody in their base has noticed that they called him Hitler for eight
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years, said he's the biggest risk to America, and then they're acting proud that they rolled
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over and gave him the win to protect democracy?
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The Democrat message is, Trump is Hitler, and we're going to protect democracy by peacefully
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Are we the only ones who see that nothing they did makes sense, unless, unless the primary
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thing they've been telling you for eight years was known to be a lie when they said it, which
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Then Biden is going to release 11 Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo Bay.
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In other words, people with suspected terrorist tendencies.
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Two of them were, I think, Osama bin Laden's bodyguards.
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But the Biden administration is assuring us that they've been either rehabilitated or vetted and
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checked out, and they just want to send them to Oman.
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Now, if he said, we're just doing it to save money, then at least I could say, well, seems
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like a dangerous thing, but at least I'd say his money.
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It looks like somebody sat down and said, all right, what's the worst thing we could do?
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Well, let's, let's do something that's just like so indefensible that it'll just be funny.
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Like, why is it that his actual policies are indistinguishable from what I would call a practical joke?
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Well, we're going to release 11 of them to Oman.
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Well, we checked them out and, you know, we think this is a good play.
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Unless you've put internal bombs in them so they blow up when they reach Oman.
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00:19:20.740
Meanwhile, CNN's Harry Enten did a survey and asked people what their biggest memories of Trump were from prior administration.
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And apparently the January 6th event, only 5% of the people surveyed said that was their biggest memory of Trump.
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So if you thought, oh, that's telling me something, the whole world has moved on.
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The question was, you know, what's the first thing you remember?
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And Trump is somebody who reminds you of a hundred things.
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So if you ask a poll and you say, what's the biggest one?
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I don't think that means they don't care about it.
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I mean, I don't think people do care about it that much.
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What's interesting is that CNN would feature it.
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Because it has the, I think it's a biased, absurd poll with no credibility whatsoever.
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Meaning that the country doesn't care about the thing that they've been reporting on for a, for what, four years?
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The country doesn't care what CNN's reporting, which would be consistent with their, you know, decline in ratings.
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Just look at the fact that it was on CNN at all.
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Apparently, speaking of pranking, the Biden Department of Justice is going to bring 200 more people up on charges for January 6th.
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Don't they know that they're just going to be granted clemency or pardon?
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Like, it just, again, this one looks like, okay, that's a prank, right?
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You're actually going to charge 200 more, spend all that money and all that time to ruin their lives when you know they're going to be released.
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It just doesn't look like real people made these decisions.
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It looks like a bad dream or a prank or practical joke or something.
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Well, one of the big fun stories today is that Mark Zuckerberg did a video in which he says he's quite radically going to change how Facebook slash Meta is censoring.
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He said that the Trump election was sort of a cultural pivot point.
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And so he starts out by saying directly that the mood of the country is very clearly, you know, mega-looking and that he wants to adapt to it.
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But very clearly, he was saying, you know, we live in a world in which Trump won the majority, and Facebook would be better off as a company if it started to be more compatible with that point of view.
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Now, that point of view is less censorship and, you know, better processes for the censorship.
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So he described what he's going to do, which is remarkable.
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Now, as I'm talking about this, I know exactly what you're going to be thinking.
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You're going to say to me, Scott, but what about all the terrible, terrible things he did in the past with Facebook, you know, banning people and censoring and all that?
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Those are true things that I don't care about, because I don't live in the past.
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Now, you might say, but, but, Scott, what took him so long?
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To which I say, everything good takes too long.
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I'm not going to judge him for taking too long.
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So I think, and I'll tell you more details, but I think he is right on point.
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It's one of the most brilliant CEO moves you'll ever see.
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And again, I know that you're going to say, but, but I'm so mad at him.
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You don't like what he did in the past and I'm not defending it.
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I'm just saying that the moves he's making now probably are exactly what he says.
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He's going to get rid of the fact checkers because they're biased.
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The fact checkers are fake and you have to get rid of them.
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Do you know what he's going to replace fact checking with?
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He's going to copy community notes from X and he says that's what he's going to do.
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I'm going to basically copy X and use community notes because it works.
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Community notes is quite successful, I would say.
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Now, it's not easy to be a social media network and say, you see my kind of a competitor?
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I'm just going to copy that because it was a good idea.
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They're going to get rid of the automated censoring and only consider sensing some situations where somebody is being reported.
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You know, the worst violent stuff, you know, the usual stuff.
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Because you want humans to decide whether humans can or cannot do so.
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He says explicitly that the new process is going to let a lot more inappropriate stuff on the platform.
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But that the principle of free speech is more important.
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He just described a perfect MAGA opinion about free speech.
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And the moderation, the human moderators, apparently they're in California.
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What's going to happen if your moderators live in California?
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Well, it's all going to be liberal opinions of what should be allowed and what should not.
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He's moving the moderation from California to Texas.
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He's moving the moderation from California, because they're too biased,
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It sounds like exactly what you would have done.
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to, I'd say, influence or pressure other countries
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to not try to put Facebook better on a business.
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So he's completely aware that he needs the Trump administration
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Say, look, if you're going to censor us over there
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and that has an impact on our American company,
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or we're going to stop protecting you or something.
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So some other countries probably had back doors
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He's the head of a major commercial enterprise.